Client: Barkada NYC
Role: Social Media Manager & Content Strategist
Timeline: March 2024 – Present
Platforms Managed: Instagram, TikTok
Core Focus: Building a digital and physical community celebrating queer, trans and allied Filipino culture in New York City through organic social media, event promotion and storytelling.
The Challenge
Barkada NYC hosts vibrant recurring events, but translating real-world community energy into consistent digital engagement and event turnouts can be tough.
The Goal
How do you scale online visibility, deepen community connection across digital channels, and drive event attendance without a paid advertising budget?
Strategy & Approach
Creative Showcase
I standardized the graphic design we use throughout all of our collateral. Checkout the standards guide I created.
1) Community Growth and Viral Reach
+25% Community Growth: Developed and executed a structured rolling content calendar that steadily expanded our digital reach across Instagram and TikTok.
Day-One Momentum: Conceptualized and executed the channel’s inaugural TikTok, immediately capturing algorithmic traction with 9,250 organic views, establishing a high-water mark for the account that remains its top-performing video to date.
2. Data-Driven Optimization & High-Intent Conversion
The Challenge: Mobilizing the Barkada NYC diaspora community quickly to support disaster relief efforts back home.
The Strategy: Crafted targeted urgent calls-to-action across Instagram and TikTok, driving traffic directly through our link-in-bio hub to donation channels.
3) Real World Impact
The Results: Achieved an exceptional 23% click-through rate during the December/January holiday push (peaking at 22 high-intent clicks from 97 profile visits), directly contributing to a successful fundraiser that raised $800 for Filipino typhoon victims. This proved that our digital community wasn’t just passive scrollers, they are active and ready to take real-world action.
My Accomplishments
+25%
in organic community growth
9.2K
TikTok Viral Mile Stone
23% CTR / $1K
Funds Raised for Disaster Relief
- Successfully established Barkada NYC as a recognizable digital staple for the gay Filipino community in NYC and as a recognizable name amongst Filipino communities nationwide.
- Created repeatable templates that reduced content creation time while scaling output.
Key Takeaways & Learnings
- What I learned: Cultivating an organic community online requires emotional resonance, consistency, and treating social media channels as a living room rather than a billboard.
- How this translates to other brands: “This experience taught me how to build organic brand loyalty from scratch, write hyper-targeted copy, and manage end-to-end content creation for mission-driven spaces, skills I can bring to any commercial or consumer brand.”